Far be it from me to divulge the final moments of "The Hours." But don't expect a climactic scene of three generations of women gorging on a spread of leftovers, as occurs in Michael Cunningham's much-admired novel.

During a discussion last weekend at the Rafael Film Center, he and screenwriter David Hare used the ending as an example of something that worked on the page but not on celluloid. When the scene was shot as written, "it felt maudlin and too obvious," Cunningham said.

"It was what Hollywood likes to call life-affirming," Hare said. "It belonged in a 'women's picture,' and I find those pictures absolutely excruciating and condescending to women," added Hare, who invented a more subtle climax.

Right Now: Prince William and Kate Middleton Attend St. Patrick's Day Parade in West LondonInStyle

Jewelry designer Martin Katz's path to fameAssociated Press

Spoiler Alert: Sean Bean doesn't die in latest roleAssociated Press

Cunningham didn't flip out over having his words changed. "Too many writers have this thing about their work, as if it were a preserved finger of a saint. My only response is: 'Get over it,' " he said, laughing.

Everybody warned Hare that "The Hours" would be impossible to adapt because it tells the seemingly disparate stories of writer Virginia Woolf (played by Nicole Kidman), a '50s suburban housewife (Julianne Moore) and a contemporary New Yorker (Meryl Streep). "I began to feel like a Martian because I was the only person who didn't understand what the problem was. To me, it was a thriller in which the key was understanding the way the stories mesh."

Hare and Cunningham -- who are making the rounds of special Oscar screenings aimed at gaining more nominations for "The Hours" -- complimented the audience on its intelligent questions. "In Chicago, the first question was:

What were those two other women doing in a story about Virginia Woolf?" Hare said.

He apologized for the swipe a character takes at San Francisco, which came from the novel. "I did my best to water it down in the movie. Think of it this way: Richmond (England) takes a much worse beating." When Woolf's husband argues for her to stay there instead of moving to nearby London, which he considers too stimulating for her fragile nerves, Woolf replies, "If it's a choice between Richmond and death, I choose death."

"LOVELY" COUP: Meanwhile, on her computer in London, Lynne Ramsay is at work adapting another popular novel, "The Lovely Bones." Ramsay has written and directed two small movies, "Ratcatcher" and "Morvern Callar," which opens today. So how did this little-known filmmaker land such a hot property as "Lovely Bones?"

She was asked to do it by two prescient producers who read the half- finished manuscript and immediately optioned it. "I took it on before anybody knew anything about it, which is a different thing from jumping on the bandwagon after it became a huge best-seller," Ramsay told me.

Author Alice Sebold has been "very hands off," allowing Ramsay to find her own way into the story. Because much of it is set in heaven, "I've been asking myself questions like 'Do I believe in an afterlife?' " She's leaning toward casting a nonprofessional as the 14-year-old dead heroine. For her mother, "I keep visualizing Gena Rowlands as she looked in 'A Woman Under the Influence.' "

Ramsay's casting instincts are sound. For "Morvern Callar," she picked Samantha Morton (Tom Cruise's favorite "precog" in "Minority Report") to play a supermarket clerk who uses her boyfriend's suicide as a way out of her bleak life.

"Samantha was the first person I saw in the role," Ramsay said. "She looks like a girl who is capable of anything."

TRUE MATES: Leisure suits are enough of a rarity in the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel. So seeing actors Jerry O'Connell and Anthony Anderson in identical leisure wear really gave me pause. Their matching duds, Anderson told me, were designed by an old college pal, Sean "P. Diddy" Combs. (yes, that P. Diddy!).

O'Connell is Anderson's new buddy, a friendship forged shooting the new comedy "Kangaroo Jack" in the outback. The two think their real-life friendship makes the onscreen one more believable. "Audiences know whether the guys really hang out together," said O'Connell (the hunk in "Crossing Jordan").

They can tell that Abbott & Costello actually were pals, they say, because the comic duo didn't compete onscreen. "But I really don't think Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte hung out during '48 Hrs.' And Redford and Newman slept with each other's women." Anderson paused. "I'm joking. I don't know. I wasn't there."

A habitual jokester, Anderson dubbed "Kangaroo Jack's" screenwriter, Steve Bing, "the richest man in the world who couldn't invest in a condom." Bing, you may recall, fathered a child with then-girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley. His initial reluctance to claim the baby as his doesn't strike Anderson and O'Connell as caddish. "All he wanted was proof that the child was his," Anderson said. "I think any man would want that in a questionable relationship. "

FOREIGN INTRIGUE: Beginning Jan. 24, the Rafael Film Center will screen a half-dozen foreign films submitted for Oscar consideration by their respective countries, including the Romanian comedy "Philanthropy" and "Edi," an entry from Poland based on a 12th century Buddhist fable. This may be your only chance to see them. If they don't score an Oscar nomination next month, these films might never be released in this country, given the shrinking market for subtitled movies.